Born a free black in 1813 in Middlebrook,
New Jersey, Tunis Campbell was educated in a white Episcopal
school in New York until he reached eighteen. He became a
Missionary and a polished speaker on both religious and
political topics. He was an active participant in the free
black convention movement, where men of color in the
Northern states had participated in annual gatherings to try
and create their own political agenda. He became vehemently
opposed to the cob’ movement, which advocated the migration
of free blacks back to Africa, during the 1830s and 40s.

Campbell was fifty; married with four children,
living in Manhattan and working as a baker, but despite his
age and his family responsibilities, he volunteered for
military service. Although in the early days of the war the
Union army barred men of color, he eventually was able to
secure a military appointment and was ordered to South
Carolina under General Rufus Saxton. In August 1863,
Campbell reported for duty at Port Royal, South Carolina.

In January 1865, General Sherman ordered the
coastal regions to reorganize with his famous Order No. 15.
Saxton designated Campbell “superintendent” of the Georgia
Sea Islands. Campbell then took loads of black refugees to
Ossabaw, St. Catherine’s, and St. Simon’s for settlement.
After the Confederate surrender and Lincoln’s
assassina­tion, everything was in confusion. Emboldened by
the chaos, Campbell advocated launched an independent black
colony on St. Cather­ine’s Island, and forbade whites to
enter. He established an all-black government,
headquartered on the estate of Button Gwinnett, and named
himself governor. Under the protection of a militia, he
preached economic self-sufficiency. By 1866 over four
hundred freedmen and their families had been given parcels
of forty acres, scattered around the entire island at St.
Catherine’s and both children and adults attended schools.

In January 1866, President Andrew Johnson fired
Rufus Saxton and replaced him with Davis Tillson. Tillson
insisted that white men have access to St. Catherine’s
Island, and imposed his authority by force. White planters
and leaseholders then moved in, reclaiming land from African
American farmers and in return offered them labor contracts.
Campbell urged the freed people to resist, but Tillson won,
and dis­missed him on charges of misconduct.

Unfazed, Campbell spent some money of his own on a
down pay­ment on the BelleVile Plantation in McIntosh
County, Georgia. In 1867 he organized the BelleVille
Farmers Association, an independent black community of over
a hundred freed people.

Tunis Campbell was an imposing figure - over six
feet tall, with a gray goatee - and was a spellbinding
orator. In 1867, he emerged as a leader in electoral
politics and was appointed to the Board of Registration
being the single black man on the three-man board, for
Georgia’s Second District. He helped add 675 blacks and 128
whites to the McIntosh County voting rolls. That same year,
he was a delegate to an African Methodist Episcopal
Convention and to a Georgia Educational Convention, and he
represented his county at the Republican State Convention in
Atlanta on July 4. In November, he was elected (in an
election which was boycotted by the white voters), to
represent McIn­tosh County at the state’s constitutional
convention.

In the spring of 1868, he became one of only three
blacks elected to serve in the Geor­gia Senate. His first
challenge came from a white senator who argued that the
state constitution did not grant blacks the right to hold
office. Campbell lost that battle and along with his fellow
black electees, was ex­pelled from office. Campbell’s son,
elected to serve in the Georgia House, was also turned out.

By 1868 Campbell had settled his family in Darien,
Georgia where local white planters perceived his presence as
a threat. Fan Butler wrote: “He. . . very soon became a
leader of the negroes, over whom he ac­quired the most
absolute control, and managed exactly as he pleased.” In a
private letter dated March 1867, Fan Butler lodged a
complaint against Campbell, accusing him of coercion and
threatening her workers. Campbell’s interest in promoting
black autonomy was seen as a fearsome challenge even to
white Republicans and Union authorities.

Thwarted in statewide politics, Campbell decided
to concentrate his efforts in McIntosh County. He was
elected magistrate and for several years adminis­tered
justice with a high hand. The harder authorities tried to
counter Camp­bell’s influence, the greater his sway. At one
point local planters wanted to bribe him. Planter unrest
over the intractability of black labor was compounded by
economic woes. Harvest after harvest was plagued by natural
disas­ter. Drought came in 1867 and floods in 1868,
damaging crops se­verely.

But Republicans like Tunis Campbell had fallen on
hard times. Restored to his rightful seat in the Georgia
Senate in January 1871, he was arrested the next summer. To
avoid jail time required the full complement of his powers
of persuasion and intimidation. In April 1872 be was
indicted once again, charged with “false imprisonment” of a
white citizen. Despite this harassment, he continued his
heroic struggles in the Georgia legislature to secure
statutory protection for freed people and to strike down
provisions for segregated education. Election fraud in 1872
resulted in Campbell’s ouster from his Senate seat. He
contested the election, but by January 1874 he had given up
the battle to overturn the rigged election results, and was
concentrating on local politics in Darien. The very same
month marked his final downfall. He had been dodging formal
charges for years, but with the growing strength of white
supremacists and with a conservative judge on the bench, he
was convicted of the earlier false imprison­ment charge and
sentenced to a year in prison. He tried for months to
overturn his conviction, but when his appeals ran out he was
defeated.

The state delivered the ultimate humiliation by
sentencing the sixty-three-year-old to work on a chain gang,
which has been described as “worse than slavery.” Although
a group of prominent black citizens tried to secure his
early release, the governor denied their petition and he
served his full year. Once he was free, he was driven out
of Georgia.